SIXED Up

by Lubowa M. Planet

  A bara is an animal unique to this planet. It’s herbivorous and makes good eating. They are rodents, similar to Earth’s capybara but not quite as big. The males weigh in at about 100 pounds and the females are a dozen pounds lighter. This one looked like a young female.

  I’d gone into stealth mode without thinking and was at 40 feet when she sensed me and tried to run for it. I swung the sling around my head and released, aiming ten feet in front of the fleeing animal. She saw the missile too late, a split second before it slammed into her head, killing her before she could squeal and dropping her right there.

  I took off toward the carcass, loading another rock into my sling in case the zurd that had appeared in the sky above us decided to take a chance and try to steal my catch. The zurd was this planet’s equivalent to a buzzard and while I didn’t mind leaving it some scraps, I was damned if I was going to let it get away with taking the whole thing. You don’t want to eat anything that a zurd has so much as touched.

  I got to the dead bara and pulled out my cutting stone. I slit it from neck to crotch, pulling out the stomach and large intestines. I threw them over my shoulder as far as I could and saw the zurd and a couple of his friends dive for it.

  I used some of the small intestines to tie the back legs together, swung it over my back with the open part away from me and the back legs around my neck. I held the intestines away from my throat with my left hand so I didn’t choke myself as I walked along.

  I hadn’t gone another hundred yards when I saw another bara, a male this time, off to the left. I snuck up on it, loading my sling once more and was able to make the shot with the female still on my back. This time I made the same slit to bleed it out but didn’t give anything to the zurds. The people had figured out how to use every part of their game for food and while they didn’t mind leaving some for the zurds, they didn’t go overboard and short themselves.

  This one also went around my neck. I was carting almost 200 pounds and it slowed me down some. Thank God for nanites; I’d never have been able to handle this with my Earth body at any age. The gravity here was about ten percent less than Earth’s, so that helped, too.

  It took ten minutes or so to reach the river. It was flowing smoothly and I waded in, kneeling to wash my body and the two animals that were still on my back.

  It took five minutes longer to get to the village than it would have if I was unburdened. What I found was definitely not what I’d been expecting.

  I knew the village had about 35 adults and 15 children. There was one female who was ten months past her fourteenth birthday and three more who were due to turn fourteen over the next three months. It was planned that I’d find a mate out of that pool of four. I was supposed to walk into town with enough food to feed everybody, impress the hell out of everyone and establish myself.

  Instead, I walked into a village that I would have thought deserted except for the wailing at the far end, out of sight.

  I put the two bara down next to a cooking pit and followed the sounds of women crying until I saw a group of people gathered around something on the ground. I made my way forward until I could see it was a young man, maybe fifteen or sixteen and his right leg was broken, the bone sticking out. It was also pumping out blood way too fast for comfort. They were all watching it but nobody was doing anything.

  I knelt down and pulled my pouch loose, using my sharp rock to cut the stitching at one end of the strap. I wrapped it around his leg above where it was bleeding and used the sharp rock as a stick and twisted the tourniquet to stop the flow of blood.

  “I need a needle and the finest thread you have,” I told the crowd, only to get some stunned stares. “NOW,” I shouted.

  That shook up a woman who was kneeling at the wounded man’s side, holding onto his hand, and she took off at a run, going into a tent about fifteen feet away.

  She rushed right back, holding her hands out. I noticed that she was wearing a loincloth and nothing else.

  “Put about this much thread on the needle,” I told her, holding my hands a couple of feet apart.

  “I need two sticks, from here to here,” I said, putting my hands against his leg, “and this big around,” making a circle with my finger and thumb. “And some more leather straps like this to tie around his leg and the two sticks.” One of the men took off.

  Well, this was the shits. My patient was gritting his teeth, trying to smile at me, but I could tell he was going fast. He was extremely pale and I was sure he’d be going into shock soon, if he didn’t die first.

  I was handed the needle and I asked what the maiden’s name was. “May,” she answered.

  I bent down, near the wound. I loosened the tourniquet enough to let some fresh blood clean it out, then tightened it, telling May to hold it tight. I sucked as much blood out of the wound as I could, then started stitching the torn artery. I had to stop stitching a couple of times to suck out more blood. There were several gasps from the people around me as I did something none of them had ever thought of.

  When I was finished sewing up the artery, I told May to slightly untwist the tourniquet. There was no leakage so I had her slowly undo it completely.

  The guy was back with the sticks and some leather strips. My patient had finally succumbed and was unconscious. I checked his pulse and it was easy enough to find and it seemed fairly steady. That was one thing I’d never been trained on so I didn’t know what to expect. That it was strong enough for me to find right away gave me hope.

  “We need something hard we can put between his teeth so he doesn’t bite himself,” I said. May ran off and came back with a bone that was an inch and a quarter thick. She knelt down near his head, lifted it onto her lap and worked the bone into his mouth.

  I had two men hold his arms to keep him still. Four more held on to his leg, two on each side of the break. I felt his leg on the far side of the fracture and told the four on his leg to pull until I could feel it snap back into place.

  “OK, I need you all the keep it tight so I can close this wound.”

  I had nothing to sterilize the wound with. He was lying on a dirty skin that was now soaked in blood. Maybe some nanites would help the healing process. It had to be better than nothing, I thought, as I spit into the wound.

  I took a couple of minutes to sew him up. He moved his head back and forth a few times as we were putting the bone back in place and while I was sewing him up, but he didn’t awaken. Once I had him sewed up, I got a couple of the women to hold the sticks and started to wrap the leather strips in place. I was quickly pushed to the side as two more women took over.

  “That’s all I know how to do,” I said. “He needs to keep that leg absolutely still for at least a week and then he won’t be able to move that leg for at least four more. We know he’s going to want to get up but you need to tie him down if that’s what it takes to keep him from ruining that leg forever.”

  “I will see that he is taken care of,” May told me. I could tell that he would be in deep shit if she caught him messing up.

  “What happened to him?” I asked.

  Five of the men had gone out hunting and had been surprised by a gir, a member of the cat family about the size of a tiger. They were very territorial and you could count on being attacked if you crossed one’s path.

  Three of the hunting party were dead. Gon, the injured, man had been dragged back by Jan, his brother. Jan was feeling guilty that he’d abandoned the three who were dead and didn’t stay and kill the gir.

  “I need you to take me back to where you last saw the gir, I told Jan.”

  That got me a chorus of people telling me that I was crazy, suicidal, da da, da da, da da.

  I started to search for my pouch and found it in May’s lap. She was frowning as she tried to match the stitching as she sewed the end of the strap back onto my rock pouch.

  “Just do the best you can and I’ll show you how to make those stitches when I get back,” I told her.

  “Are you sure you’ll
be back?”

  “You can count on it.”

  Jan described where he had encountered the gir. I recognized the area he was talking about by the landmarks he described and knew that he’d carried his brother almost four miles. It had to be mostly on adrenalin and I could tell he was coming down from it.

  “You made the best choice, Jan,” I told him. “If you stayed, you’d probably be dead, along with Gon. There was nothing you could do for the three who are already dead.

  “There are two bara down at the other end of the camp, near a fire pit,” I told May. “They need to be prepared and are my gift to the village. Feel free to cook them while Jan and I are gone.”

  I was thanked for supplying two bara and there was quite a bit of surprise that I’d been able to down both of them and get them to the village. Jan and I headed out to deal with the gir.

  We were about two and a half miles away when the wind changed. It was heading straight toward our backs which meant our scent was going to be blown right at the gir as we got closer. I told Jan that we needed to make a wide loop around it so we could sneak up on it.

  While we were circling around, I restocked my rock bag, making sure to get baseball sized rocks that had some mass to them. The bagful was heavy but I’d rather strain a little to carry them than carry something lighter that would just annoy the gir.

  Jan was curious about me and my confidence that I could take down the gir when five of them couldn’t even slow it down earlier. I just told him that I came from a place far away and knew some things that his people didn’t. I pointed out that I’d known how to stitch up his brother’s artery and leg and how to put the bone back in place and stabilize it. That seemed to handle any doubt he had for the time being, at least until he could see the result of my battle with the gir. Of course, if I was wrong, he wouldn’t be around for long and it wouldn’t make much difference.

  We got within fifty feet of the beast when Jan stumbled. The gir noticed us, of course, and charged directly at us. At forty feet, I hit him right between the eyes and took a golf ball sized chunk out of him. He staggered and shook his head to get the blood out of his eyes, spraying the red stuff twenty feet out in a 180 degree arc. He started towards us again, definitely unsteady on his feet and I hit him with everything I had when he was about fifteen feet away. He stopped and tried to look at me but the way his eyes were glazed over, I don’t think he could actually see anything. After ten seconds of trying to focus, his front legs gave out. Another ten seconds went by and then he just rolled over onto his side, dead.

  I felt more alive than ever. Gem had talked of my danger sense, and that was definitely there, but there was so much more. I’d been able to sense Jan’s fear, at first when I told him I wanted him to guide me to where they’d encountered the beast, then increasing until he couldn’t concentrate on anything else and stumbled, at which point it turned into pure terror, paralyzing him to the spot he was standing. I felt an emotion from the beast, not anger or fury, just a sense of wrongness. This was his territory and we didn’t belong there and needed to be killed. A form of survival, I suppose, nothing personal, just business. There had also been a sense of power. I was in control and time slowed down as I took the steps necessary to take out this monster. There was never any fear because I knew he was no threat to me.

  Once we were sure the gir was no threat, we went a quarter mile to the southeast, to where the original encounter had been. All three men were there, looking like rag dolls with the stuffing torn out. The gir had ripped into them, taking the choice parts. Since it was a quarter mile away from the bodies when we found it, it had either heard or smelled us before Jan stumbled or it hadn’t really been hungry and just played with the bodies and left them there. They weren’t neglected though, there were a dozen zurds tearing off chunks of meat.

  “They will go back into the cycle, now,” I told Jan.

  “It is good,” he said. “I will miss my friends, though.”

  “Were they good men?”

  “As good as men can be in this life. We all ran around together as children. There are three women who will be lonely tonight.”

  “Perhaps one of them will be interested in a homeless wanderer like me.”

  “What is your story, Stranger? And what is your name?”

  “My name is Jeff.”

  “Jeff. It is an unusual name, but I like it.”

  “I come from a land far away from here. I’m looking for a place to live with people I will enjoy living with.”

  “Maybe our village will be acceptable. We have lost three hunters and my brother can not hunt now and he may never again. You have shown yourself to be an exceptional hunter, both by your gifts of bara and by taking on the gir by yourself.”

  “I wasn’t alone for the gir,” I told him.

  “I just led you to him and my clumsiness could have gotten us both killed if you weren’t so skillful.”

  “We all help in our own way, Jan. Besides, I need you to help drag this beast back to the village. There is no way I could carry an animal this large.”

  We’d made our way back to the dead gir. Similar to the tiger in appearance, this cat was smaller but still weighed in at a respectable 300 – 450 pounds. This one had to be close to 350. Unlike the tiger’s orange with black stripes, these cats were a dark brown color, making them almost invisible from dusk until dawn.

  Jan had carried large animals back to the village before because he quickly found a couple of suitable branches and some vines to fashion a travois. I slit the animal’s throat so it could bleed out as we pulled it back.

  I went over what I knew about the people’s attitudes toward death. They accepted it as a part of life but they could still feel grief. I imagine the crying I heard when I arrived was from the wives of the three who had been killed. Whoever it was had settled down by the time I got to the crowd gathered around Gon.

  There was no burial, cremation or disposal of the body as we knew it. Jan and I had checked to verify that the three victims were on their journey back to nature. The concept of dust to dust was accepted in this world but the dead might pass through multiple predators and scavengers before assuming that state. When someone died in the village, it was common to take the body away and leave it where it would be found by predators. The people believed that the predators had as much right to live as they did and if they could help them out with a dead body now and then, the predator might show some mercy on them. Once the person was dead, they believed the body was useless and that the person himself would go to their version of the underworld, which was looked over by its own god. There they would reflect on their life and would either return in a new body or move on to the next world. The reflexion could take a few weeks or a few centuries.

  Both Jan and Gon had the straps on their arms that signified they were fifteen or older and single. I asked Jay about something I’d observed. “It looks like May is in love with your brother.”

  “Yes, they have been pledged to each other since they were children.”

  “I don’t understand why they aren’t married already. I thought when two people found each other and were the right age, it was traditional to marry as soon as possible.”

  “Normally that is true but we have an unusual situation. You are aware that Gon is my brother?”

  “Yes. I found that out when I started treating Gon.”

  “He and I came from the same womb on the same day.”

  “Ah, you are twins.”

  “Twins, yes, but we do not look the same.”

  “There are identical twins and fraternal twins. It just depends on the manner of conception. Sometimes one child will divide into two shortly after it is conceived. Other times, two seeds may find their mate at the same time and the children will look different. But I don’t understand what that has to do with Gon and May getting married.”

  “Gon and I have been closer than most brothers ever since we were born. We found two sisters who are as close as we are only
they are not twins. Gon is with May and I am with her sister Eva. Eva will be old enough to bare her chest in two months. The four of us pledged to wait until we were all old enough and would get married on the same day and live in the same house. I carried Gon back to the village even though I knew there was no hope he could survive. He begged me to take him to May so that they could say goodbye. Now that you have appeared and saved him from a trip to the underworld, all four of us are permanently in your debt and none of us will be able to turn down any request from you.”

  “What if I wanted to take May or Eva for my wife?”

  “That would be your right. Neither has been claimed officially and neither Gon nor I would do anything to stop you.”

  He didn’t bat an eyelash; he just agreed to give me what I asked for, although I could tell it would make him miserable to do so.

  “Well, that’s something you won’t need to worry about. In fact, you don’t need to feel that you are in my debt. Does Gon owe you something because you carried his body back to the village? Wouldn’t he have done the same thing if it was you who was attacked?”

  “You speak the truth but we still owe you. He is my brother who shared a womb with me. You are a stranger I never saw before today.”

  “Name one of your children after me, then.”

  “I would be proud to have a child who bears your name but I will let Gon have that honor since it is his life that you saved.”

  “I hope you’re right, but the gods will still determine what happens to him. I did things you don’t know how to do but he is still in bad shape and he isn’t well yet.”

  “The gods would not be cruel enough to let you save him from certain death and still take him from us.”

  “I hope you are right. Do you smell that? Something smells good.”

  He sniffed and shook his head. After walking another fifty feet, he sniffed again. “Ah, it is the village. They are cooking the bara you brought us.”